When buying a graphics card, if there are multiple VRAM options for the same model, many people may encounter a choice barrier, wondering whether to choose the higher version or the standard version. Recently, a YouTuber used the latest RTX 4060 Ti 8GB and 16GB to explain this and why you should not choose 8GB in 2023. Most game performance will be much better with 16GB, and in the long run, it will indeed be better to choose a larger VRAM.
Foreign YouTuber uses actual measurements to explain why you shouldn’t choose 8GB VRAM when buying a graphics card in 2023
A few days ago, foreign YouTube channel Daniel Owen shared a video of “How bad is 8GB VRAM in 2023”. He used two graphics cards, RTX 4060 Ti 8GB and RTX 4060 Ti 16GB, to illustrate the impact of more VRAM on modern games.
Owen found that by 2023, the VRAM used by many games when running has exceeded 8GB. He tested 7 of the latest AAA game masterpieces, including “Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart”, “Star Wars Jedi: Survivors”, “Charmed Land”, “Cyberpunk 2077”, “Evil Castle 4”, “Remnant” 2″ and “The Last of Us Part 1”, each game also runs multiple image quality settings, such as 1080p, 1440, 4K, turning on RT, etc.
Actual measurements show that most games require more than 8GB of VRAM, mostly between 9GB and 111GB. If “Castle of Evil 4” is set to 4K resolution and the highest image quality, it requires 12.1GB, which means that RTX 4060 Ti 8GB is not enough, and 16GB can handle it:
But despite this, not every game with 16GB will perform significantly better than 8GB. Here I will capture a few more important games.
In the game “Castle of Evil 4”, RTX 4060 Ti 16GB is 11% faster than 8GB at 1080p settings, 9% faster at 1440p, and 24% faster at 4K. What is more noteworthy is that at 1% lows, the bottleneck of 8GB becomes more obvious, and 16GB leads the performance of these three resolutions by 77% ~ 113%:
The gap in “Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart” is also huge. With RT enabled and 1080p Very High settings, 16GB is 34% faster than 8GB. The gap widens to 43% at 1440p and 85% at 4K. However, the gap is not that big when RT is turned off:
There is no obvious performance improvement in “Remnants 2” and “Star Wars Jedi: Survivors”, 16GB and 8GB are about the same:
The same goes for “Cyberpunk 2077”. Owen also found that using DLSS 3 technology will consume more VRAM. For example, in the RTX 4060 Ti 16GB 1440p RT Ultra setting, it consumes 8426MB VRAM. After changing to DLSS image quality, the VRAM becomes 7249MB, which is 1GB less. The same goes for RTX 4060 Ti 8GB, but because of the bottleneck, the consumption is not as high as 16GB:
Therefore, the slightly more expensive 16GB version will basically have better game performance than the 8GB version. Although not every model is like this, it can at least be a better investment in the long term. The demand for VRAM in future games will only increase.
But if you mostly don’t play AAA games, I think if the price difference is too big, you can actually consider the 8GB version. After all, it saves money.
Full video:
Source: KOCPC Chinese